After saying she would no longer be commenting on the Madeleine McCann case, Pat Brown's latest comment on the case deals with why she thinks Madeleine was not "abducted" earlier than May 3rd. www.patbrownprofiling.blogspot.com (Wednesday, April 22, 2015)

Problem I have with the Smith sighting is that if you were Gerry carrying a dead child and there were a group of people walking towards you, would you carry on walking towards that group? Or would you change direction?

If Gerry really did do this with his dead daughter Madeleine, it took some guts to blatantly walk past people. Even if deep down inside you knew they would not realise she was dead, knowing this yourself would make it very hard to actually just walk past a group of people - what if they said hello, as holidaymakers often do? What if they wanted a closer look at the supposed sleeping child? A sweetly sleeping little girl would bring out the maternal instinct in a woman in particular and there were women in the group I believe. I myself have gone weak at the knees at the sight of a beautiful angel of a child peacefully sleeping in a pushchair or in a parent's arms and the urge for a closer look is irresistible. It was a big risk I believe, a very big risk.

I could understand it more if the man carrying the child shifted the child's position so, when carrying her, her face was hidden from view.

The Smiths said something like the man they saw did not really act in a normal way, something like that, and its another reason why it aroused suspicion in them. But they say they saw something of the child's face I think.

The fact he did not turn around makes me wonder who it was, whether it was Gerry at all. But whoever it was, if the child was a dead Madeleine, even in someone else's arms other than Gerry's, its the same reasoning - why walk past the group when you could turn around and walk in a different direction?

Pat Brown talks about this crime occurring in a simpler way, but walking past a group of people blatantly carrying a dead child is not really a simple thing to do, whoever did it.

This post isn't really a commentary on the Madeleine McCann case but this case does so well represent Occam's Razor in crime analysis that I feel a need to use it as an example. In my blog yesterday, "It Just Doesn't Work that Way in Real Life," I discussed how shows like Death in Paradise have very complicated scenarios of how a murder was committed, the perpetrator being practically a genius of planning and misdirection. I pointed out how rarely is this the case in real life; almost always, homicides are usually acts of desperation born of loss of power and control. Crimes of passion (quite mislabeled as passion being the motive), also known as "out-of-character" crimes (which is also a mislabel as the crime is quite within the character of the person committing it) are relatively impulsive, so planning is quite minimal. Serial killers are mostly of the anger-retaliatory type and rarely plan the crime much in advance; usually they are opportunistic and strike when they have a victim that wanders into their territory alone or, while doing their usually trolling of an area, finally get lucky when a target appears with no witnesses in the area. The reason they get away with their crimes is simply the fact that most of the time there are no witnesses and they are strangers to the victim and there is no obvious link for the police to follow. As long as they don't leave DNA that can be matched to a DNA bank, they have a good shot of getting away with their homicides.

Much rarer is someone who plans a homicide: a black widow poisoning her husbands, a man getting rid of his wife so he can have his freedom, a boyfriend eliminating a pregnant girlfriend. Usually the crime is not all that clever, it is just often hard to prove in a court of law that the killer is guilty. Much of the time, the body is well-hidden so that the "no-body, no proof of a crime" rule applies. At other times, the crime is staged as a stranger homicide and it works but not because it is so intricately planned. It simply works because evidence is limited to prove otherwise.

Killers are generally of normal intelligence who commit their crimes without great forethought and they also tend to cover their tracks in a hurried manner. Murderers don't think to the depth of perpetrators on television or in the movies; they just rush to take care of the problem and, in doing so, act in a manner that many others in their shoes have acted before. In real life, crimes are often committed and covered up in similar ways, the way humans act when under pressure and with the limited knowledge most have at the time of the crime and while under stress.

I am repeatedly encouraged in the McCann case to do further research on a number of issues that some believe proves Madeleine McCann died earlier in the week and that on May 3rd, the McCanns and their friends had a preplanned course of action to stage an abduction. They believe there is lots of evidence proving that Madeleine was dead for days by then: incorrect creche records, a manipulated photo, no sightings of Madeleine, odd behaviors, and no neglect of the children. I am not going to argue all of this: I am going to point out Occam's Razor and why have always thought that May 3rd was the key to what happened to Madeleine and when.

If something had happened to Madeleine days before, we simply would have seen her "abduction" staged earlier in the week. In real life, planning to stage an abduction for days and having to manipulate evidence of Madeleine being alive for days when she was not, is simply too bloody difficult to manage. Then, on May 3rd, after all that planning, the whole evening was an ungodly mess full of inconsistencies and errors, which would be odd for a so carefully premeditated scenario.

If the McCanns are guilty, what May 3rd represents is a disaster, as Gerry pointed out, and a quick attempt to over up that disaster. The simplest answer, Occam's Razor, is that May 3rd was a confusion because very little was planned and when it was (interviews with the police), it was still a confused mess because there was little time to think anything through and everyone's brains were a muddle.

The key to this crime is very simple: the Smith sighting. The Smith sighting has always been my Number One reason for doubting the McCanns' innocence in the disappearance of Madeleine. The most consistent behavior of parents of missing children is to want EVERY lead followed, even ridiculous ones. On the evening of May 3rd, the Smith family saw a child who could have been Madeleine being carried off towards the sea, yet the McCanns expressed little interest in this sighting and even tried to suppress it. If the McCanns were innocent and Gerry was not Smithman, and even if they thought Jane was telling the truth, that Tannerman existed and might have been the kidnapper, it is hard to believe they would not have been gung-ho to follow-up that Smith sighting in every way possible, the way they did with Tannerman.

Applying Occam's Razor, why would they ignore and suppress the Smith sighting? What is the simplest of explanations? Because it was Gerry and he was in the act of covering up a crime that had just occurred. The reason Gonçalo Amaral believed this to be so is because he is a real-world detective and knows that Occam's Razor applies in crime investigation and the fanciful stuff you see on television is concocted by writers who need to come up with a show that is exciting to the viewers.

Detectives and profilers often are driven nuts by family members and citizens who, when a case goes unsolved, start going bonkers with unlikely theories, full of very intricate plots. They figure, if no one has been arrested and convicted, it must be because the crime is so complicated and clever.

In real life, it is often so much simpler; the crime is straightforward but it is hard to prove in court.

LJC wrote:Problem I have with the Smith sighting is that if you were Gerry carrying a dead child and there were a group of people walking towards you, would you carry on walking towards that group? Or would you change direction?

If Gerry really did do this with his dead daughter Madeleine, it took some guts to blatantly walk past people. Even if deep down inside you knew they would not realise she was dead, knowing this yourself would make it very hard to actually just walk past a group of people - what if they said hello, as holidaymakers often do? What if they wanted a closer look at the supposed sleeping child? A sweetly sleeping little girl would bring out the maternal instinct in a woman in particular and there were women in the group I believe. I myself have gone weak at the knees at the sight of a beautiful angel of a child peacefully sleeping in a pushchair or in a parent's arms and the urge for a closer look is irresistible. It was a big risk I believe, a very big risk.

I could understand it more if the man carrying the child shifted the child's position so, when carrying her, her face was hidden from view.

The Smiths said something like the man they saw did not really act in a normal way, something like that, and its another reason why it aroused suspicion in them. But they say they saw something of the child's face I think.

The fact he did not turn around makes me wonder who it was, whether it was Gerry at all. But whoever it was, if the child was a dead Madeleine, even in someone else's arms other than Gerry's, its the same reasoning - why walk past the group when you could turn around and walk in a different direction?

Pat Brown talks about this crime occurring in a simpler way, but walking past a group of people blatantly carrying a dead child is not really a simple thing to do, whoever did it.

Just my opinion.

I do believe the Smiths said that the man was carrying the child against his shoulder , It was seeing Gerry carrying one y of the twins from the aircraft the same way that reminded Mr Smith of it. This position was conveniently changed by Scotland Yard and the McCann's documentary to the image that Jane Tanner supposedly saw, that of a child across the arms. Now they spew it as fact and it isn't . Mr Smith clearly stated the child was carried up against the shoulder.